


Skin Diving

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M, for:rawiyaparand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-15
Updated: 2008-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:17:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revenge is a dish best served soaking wet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin Diving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alanwolfmoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alanwolfmoon/gifts).



> Betas by leiascully and shutterbug_12.

**Skin Diving**

House paused halfway through writing symptoms up on the whiteboard. Part of the reason was to annoy Foreman. Part of the reason was to grapple more effectively for the marker, which Foreman was trying to pull out of his hands.

Okay, so most of the reason was to annoy Foreman. "Why do you smell like chlorine?" he asked.

Foreman rolled his eyes and tugged the whiteboard marker the rest of the way out of House's hand. "I don't." He turned back to Taub, Kutner, and Thirteen with a smile, as if he was Ron Popeil demonstrating a juicer and trying to ignore the amateur juicing-moron beside him, decorated with the mutilated corpses of a dozen oranges. "As I was saying about the _patient_\--"

Actually, that made House the amateur juicing moron in question, which wasn't the most flattering image in the world. Also, Foreman was evading. "Yes, you do," he said.

Foreman glared at him. The underlings had dropped their folders and were sitting back, taking on the expression of tennis spectators who were trampled in line and got the leftover tickets to the boring dregs of Wimbledon. "It doesn't matter," Foreman said flatly. As if he thought House might drop it.

Triumph. House proceeded to forget the patient entirely. "If it didn't matter, you would have given me a reason."

"If I'd given you a reason, you would have assumed I was lying. Cytokine storm fits the autoimmune symptoms--"

"And instead of lying, you're choosing to avoid the question." House leaned in for another whiff. Definitely chlorine. He took a thoughtful sip from his coffee mug, narrowing down the possibilities. "You've been swimming."

"Yes, House, I exercise. I also practice medicine."

"But you can't do both at the same time. Not when you've been on call for forty-eight hours."

Foreman stopped, resting two hands on the back of the nearest chair, and stared through the glass tabletop. House spread his benevolent interest through the room. He was certain that Kutner, at least, and possibly Thirteen, were already brainstorming all the possible times and locations that Foreman might have been swimming.

"Gym down the street," Thirteen said. House nodded his approval; the place was a haven for attractive young professionals with more muscles than brains and the cash to blow on ridiculous member fees. Foreman's kind of place.

"Chemical spill in the locker room showers?" Taub offered reluctantly, clearly trying to cut Foreman a break. House would be noting that on Taub's YES column on his next 'who shall I prank' checklist.

"Occupational therapy pool," Kutner said, with the bored tone of someone who is irrefutably correct. "No one's there after hours, Foreman would have access without leaving the campus, they've recently changed from salt water to chlorine, and his shirt was damp when he got here this morning."

Taub and Thirteen turned to stare at Foreman, Taub mildly inquiring and Thirteen with her ridiculously pretty sloe-eyed '_seriously?_' look.

Foreman took one deep breath and started to look up, hands gripping the back of the chair like he was no doubt imagining it was Kutner's skinny neck. House sipped his coffee, working at radiating a general sense of glee through a series of blinks without once changing expression. His true minions would understand that their lord and master was pleased. If not, at least their confusion would be entertaining. If Kutner didn't watch out, he might learn something during this fellowship, and then he'd be unstoppable. House thought about adopting him from the lost-animal shelter and parading him through hospital fundraisers as a conversation-stopper.

Kutner glanced back and forth from Taub to Thirteen, as if he wasn't exactly sure what he'd said that had made Foreman start breathing like an enraged rodeo bull, and added, "Cytokine storm could mean hyperthyroidism...Think the patient has Graves disease?"

Which was when everybody's pagers went off, and Foreman led the charge to escape the conference room. Obviously because he cared deeply about patient care and resuscitating their mystery for House to solve. Couldn't be anything like the fact that Kutner was exactly right--and that wasn't the end of the story.

House ambled back to his lounge chair, folded his hands across his stomach, and started plotting.

 

* * *

 

Thirteen was up to three YESes in the pranks sweepstakes. Taub had recently been reset down to zero, after a very successful fake phone call to his wife which revealed that she really was paying that much for plumbers to fix her piping, and not, as House had so ardently hoped, 'fix her piping'. Kutner was beyond hope with _sixteen_, and it was a wonder House hadn't drowned him in an avalanche of rubber duckies from an innocent-looking supply closet, but recently he'd said something not entirely ludicrous during a differential that had led to House pulling a cure pretty much out of his ass right in front of Cuddy and the patient's already-on-retainer personal injury lawyer, so House reluctantly added a NO in the opposite column, which took Kutner off the list for today.

House pouted thoughtfully. Wilson had threatened to change his locks the last time House had burst on him at this hour. Cameron and Chase weren't even working night-shifts these days, those slackers. Their current patient was stable, if 'requiring constant transfusions to stay ahead of the internal bleeding' could be considered stable (House figured it totally could; she wasn't vomiting arterial red any more, which was an improvement over this afternoon).

But he was still at work. And bored. And restless. And vaguely annoyed that everyone had gone home without doing anything remotely interesting.

House frowned through the glass wall. Actually, not everyone had gone home. Foreman's coat was hanging from the coat tree in the conference room. He was on-call. And he hadn't taken the weekend pager home.

And it was three in the morning.

House lifted his leg down from the desk and grabbed his cane, reviewing the evidence as he went. Foreman needed some way to stay awake; coffee was less effective than the icy waters of the North Atlantic that the physios in this hospital called their occupational therapy pool; and House had spent the last two months carefully pretending he'd forgotten all about Foreman's misuse of hospital resources, waiting for him to drop his guard.

Conclusion: Foreman would be happy to entertain him until the patient picked up the slack.

 

* * *

 

The pool room was dim, with just a few of the overhead lights on. House made his way carefully across the room to stand at the edge that Foreman was heading for. "Patient's dying!" he barked. "Up and at 'em!"

Which was when he actually looked at Foreman. Who had--very clearly, since House had a very direct view--gotten rid of the stick up his ass.

"House--" Foreman stopped his forward crawl, sucked in a breath that was mostly water, and started coughing and sputtering.

"Oh my _God_," House said loudly, his voice echoing around the tiled pool deck. Laughter challenged complete disbelief to a duel to the death somewhere between his chest and his larynx. House sat the battle out and wondered if he could get to the switch for the underwater lights and back to the poolside before Foreman recovered and decided to murder him to keep his secret intact.

Foreman's glare of death was somewhat the worse for wear when he delivered it while treading water. "Get the hell out, House," he said, managing his breathing pretty well for someone who was _swimming naked in his workplace_.

"If I'd known you were going to take the boring comment this much to heart," House said, with all the leering appreciation he could muster, "I would've told you sooner."

Foreman pushed water out of his face with one hand. "House--"

"No need to defend yourself. I know it's just water shrinkage."

"Look," Foreman said, hooking his elbow over the side of the pool and staring up at House with the same look of complete aggravation that House had always liked so well for him. Amazing that he could maintain that much put-upon indignation under the circumstances. The way he was trying to cling to the tattered shreds of his dignity was absurdly disappointing, though. "Can you save the humiliation for some other time?"

"Some other time meaning mid-differential tomorrow?" House wasn't beyond pity, though, so he pushed the nearest towel to the pool edge with the tip of his cane, innocently pretending not to ogle. Somehow he didn't think Foreman was buying the act. It might have had something to do with the fact that House hadn't actually looked away since he realized that Foreman was a) naked, b) stupidly well-muscled, and c) no, seriously, _naked_. It was incredibly distracting, and House crept closer to the edge of the pool to improve his view. And dumped Foreman's towel into the water. "Oops?" he offered.

For a second, Foreman looked resigned, and House felt a little flip of disappointment somewhere south of his stomach.

The next thing he knew, he was being yanked forward. Foreman grabbed his cane, just within reach, and hauled him forward. House stumbled on the pool edge, let go of his cane too fast, and then plunged headfirst and fully clothed into the pool.

Chlorinated water went up his nose, he was barely able to push off the bottom of the pool to get back to the surface, choking and flinging his arm out for something to hold on to.

'Something' happened to be Foreman. Who was staring at him with a flat, nearly unreadable look. House let go of him as soon as he realized he wasn't drowning, and groped for the pool edge. "Your concept of revenge needs work," he managed to get out, still coughing up pool water. He checked in with his various body parts: they agreed that he was soaked and likely to remain so because he hadn't brought a change of clothes to the hospital. After consultation, they delivered a hesitant verdict of 'not about to revolt in debilitating pain'. They also were firmly of the opinion that priority number one was getting back at Foreman. House narrowed his eyes. Foreman was looking far less pissed off than he really should be.

"You're not laughing," he said.

Foreman tilted his head, still with that half-smug, half-smirking look. "So?"

House peered at him. There was less than a foot between them and Foreman wasn't trying to get away. Hadn't dived for his towel. Let House use him as a buoy. "You're enjoying this," he said in realization. He shivered and decided to blame the water.

Foreman snorted. "Your impression of a drowned rat? Yeah, I am."

House didn't even bother replying. People who served revenge cold were obviously idiots. He liked it best piping hot and preferably with a side of total astonishment. He grabbed for Foreman again, as if he was making his way to the steps at the shallow end, but instead of moving past him, House shouldered him back against the edge of the pool.

Naked only had one solution, as far as House was concerned, which he proceeded to demonstrate.

Foreman's body was warmer than the water, and the smug increased the closer House got until he wasn't looking surprised at all. Which was less disappointing than it might of been, because he was showing no signs of drowning House and staging it as a suicide. In fact, he had one hand pushed up under House's shirt and was dragging him closer. House grunted, the water lapping at his throat, and tried to wriggle to a more comfortable position. Jeans were really not built to be drenched and then have this kind of pressure put on them.

"Moron," he said at last. "You didn't shower on purpose two months ago."

Foreman chuckled. "And you figured that out when?"

House rolled his eyes. _Just now_ was obviously not an answer he'd ever admit. He reached for Foreman again, vengeance uppermost in his mind. "You don't care," he said, since he had the proof of that well in hand.

"Bastard," Foreman muttered, and kissed him again.

He tasted of chlorine.

 

_end_


End file.
